Should Britain intervene in Syria?

Despite the growing unrest in Syria with street protests still continuing across the country and despite the international condemnation for the violence meted out to the protestors by the security forces,  President Assad shows no signs of giving up power  With the body count rising, we have now seen tanks on the streets of the Northern city of Hama.  Some people are beginning to ask; “should we intervene as we did with Libya?”

William Hague at the foreign office has ruled out military intervention in Syria saying that the situation there is quite different to Libya.  With unarmed civilians being slaughtered by tanks and snipers, at first glance the situation in Syria does not look so different, but there are some differences to the situation in Libya.  While there was a call from the Arab League and the Libyan people themselves for military intervention in Libya, there has been no such call for action in Syria.  While it may frustrate some of those calling for more direct action, without international unity, there’s not much that can be done.  The “no fly zone” in Libya was sanctioned and enforced by the UN, but this time round, the United Nations has been reluctant to get involved in Syria.

One reason for the reluctance to use force may be the realisation that airstrikes alone have only limited success and the Gaddaffi regime has proved to be a lot more resilient than first expected. With budgets strained and our already stretched armed forces spread thin, does Britain or its allies, really have the resources to begin another lengthy campaign of air assaults? And if indeed the resources are there, is there the political will? Going to war with Iraq under what we now know were false pretences, caused considerable damage to Britain’s reputation and more and more people are asking what exactly we are doing in Afghanistan. Attacking another Middle Eastern country would be folly.

Of course many a cynic would say that the only reason we got involved in Libya was because they have precious oil reserves. As easy as it would be to discount conspiracy theories, it does make you ask some serious questions. If for instance, Zimbabwe had oil, could we have expected to have seen more than just strong words against Robert Mugabe? Why did we invade Iraq but not intervene in Rwanda? Why attack Libya while we just sat back and watched the genocide in Darfur?

Whatever the truth is, the UN looks unlikely and unwilling to use force and instead has frozen the assets and imposed sanctions on the Assad regime. With the bullets still flying though, quite how effective these sanctions will be is open to question.